


a prayer for the living

by love_coloured



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, past josephine/leliana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 13:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11784168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/love_coloured/pseuds/love_coloured
Summary: ...an altar for the dead.  Josephine confronts Leliana.  Leliana confronts herself.





	a prayer for the living

**Author's Note:**

> Continuation from Pure Intentions. First time writing Leliana POV was pretty intense for me. Didn't actually intend to write an entire long chapter of Leli and Josie but it happened! I do like writing Josie...
> 
> Songs: 
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKsirIXd0Z4&list=PL3Y6EpLwZLnSkJqFhM6BGOjE_a_Gjq0-m&index=51 (this is my Lavellan's song, but it suits Leliana)
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exFvezEOrKM

Leliana ordered her agents out of the tower for the remainder of the afternoon, devoting herself to endless contemplation and prayer. Prayer in service of what goal, exactly, was a question she had yet to answer, no matter how fully supplicated and emptied of material concerns she was.

She could not avoid confrontation for long; but for now, from her perch atop the mage tower, she cherished the illusion of inner peace. A lone night bird called as it wheeled across the darkening sky. She removed her woolen cloak, letting the breeze ruffle her hair.

On cue, the ladder creaked its complaint, and she sighed. “Yes? What is it now?”

Josephine emerged wearing a finely knit, lace-trimmed cloak of cream and violet over her shoulders, though the air was only faintly bracing. “I thought you might be taking in some fresh air. It is a lovely evening.”

“Enough pleasantries. Haven’t you got better things to do than search every corner of this fortress?” _Isn’t it clear that I wanted to be alone?_

“You weren’t in the tower or in your chambers. That leaves either target practice or pacing the battlements, no?” At this Leliana made a face. “You have to admit, you are fairly predictable. In your own way, that is.”

“Your _concern_ in certain matters is appreciated,” Leliana said dryly, “but next time you could be more subtle about it.”

Skyhold was silent but for the muffled chatter of rank and file as they trickled out of the tavern and to their beds. Silently, the the pair regarded the distant campfires in the valley below. Josephine leaned her head over the parapet, gathering her cloak against the brisk air, and breathed in sharply. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say anything, but--”

“Then don’t.” The words landed more harshly than expected, but Leliana let them lie. Still staring fixedly into the horizon, she noted Josephine’s studied frown at the edge of her vision, the harbinger of superfluous lectures.

“That girl is quite taken with you. I won’t say that I am surprised, exactly, but coming from her...”

Leliana huffed and pursed her lips. The taste of _her_ had settled uneasily in her mouth, turning curiously nostalgic, and she loathed it: the way it flooded back when her tongue curled into speech, peeled away her armor down to the raw and carefully hidden nerve.

“Whatever was this… _game_ of yours intended to accomplish? She was in quite a state when she ran out of the hall. She nearly bowled me over.”

“To hear you talk, I have already laid waste to the tender hearts of every other fair maiden in Skyhold. Who’s counting one more?”

“I don’t know, how many have been _worth_ counting?” It was in her eyes-- she _knew,_ recognized the slip of the courtly mask, had seen the barely suppressed ferocity in Leliana’s placid smile turn to something else entirely.

“It diminishes the Inquisition for me to be so distracted.” In their halcyon days Josephine’s teasing was pure flattery, but since this great din in her head had roared into being, every shy glance or hidden blush directed her way was a knife in the back.

Josephine nudged her with an elbow and offered a flask. It was warm from being carried inside her cloak, sweet and heavy on the tongue when Leliana took a sip. The fire in her throat almost made her forget; she drank twice more to burn that taste away.

“So, how long has it been?”

“How long since…?” Leliana wasn’t sure she wanted to know the question, and to her relief there was no response.

“Don’t you think she requires a softer touch? I know you don’t usually… well, now--” Josephine blushed and tipped back the flask, no doubt to silence her tongue. At any other time, she’d have let spill tales of every callous dalliance observed in their Val Royeaux days-- or worse.

 _The kind of touch I couldn’t give you?_ A little jolt of resentment flared in Leliana’s chest. She wanted to walk away, but thought better of it for once. “Fine,” she relented with a droop of her proud shoulders. “You’ve caught me out. Yes, I ravished her like the coarse beast I am, and sent her away, because I had work to do. Yes, of course it was all my fault-- I did some things I should not have done, in a moment of weakness.”

“Oh, naturally! I would expect nothing less of such a monster,” Josephine teased.

Leliana was unsure of what lay beneath those words, so she moved on. “I knew that she wanted to kiss me. So I kissed her first...”

The part of her that dreamed of Orlesian silks and could be spurred into song by a jug of wine at sunset, still desired that kiss with an all-consuming desperation. It was the part of her she’d thought entombed in the rubble along with Justinia, although it had probably succumbed to neglect years earlier. The latter realization always crept in during the night, through any chink of moonlight or gap between thoughts, in the veil between waking and dreaming. It clawed at the back of her mind like some long-caged animal, leaving her awash with shame.

Justinia had seen everything about her at first glance: the naked, soft and desiring creature struggling to breathe another day. In her mercy she had deemed its survival instinct a worthy enough cause. She was hope incarnate, wreathed in moonbeams but brighter than the sun to Leliana in her debased state. Justinia had looked upon the wreckage that was her body and soul, and did not find it wanting. That there could have been an oversight, that Leliana could have come to ruin through her salvation, was--

 _Unthinkable._ _Reprehensible._ Reflexively, she reached for the dagger at her back, having nearly forgotten the matter at hand.

Josephine had become accustomed to Leliana’s seemingly unbidden spirit-possessions and terrors. Fearless and stone-faced, she caught the gloved hand midway in its arc. “Don’t do this to yourself, Leliana.”

What remained unspoken, intimated only the stern set of her dark eyes, was everything: _You’re clearly indisposed. Your judgment has been compromised._ To whom else, indeed, would Leliana have trusted the liberty to even think such things, the confirmation of her too-frequent lapses in reason? And yet she bristled at the implication.

“Meddling with her was unnecessary.” The instant the words left her lips she was sorry, but hurtled headlong into the fray out of spite for her own hesitation. “It _was_ you, wasn’t it? You put some… strange fancy into that head of hers-- out of _pity_ for me!– and...” The hand on her wrist became a vicehold.

“Stop this foolishness! I have done _nothing_ of the sort. Sera is more than capable of having her own ideas, as you should know very well.” Josephine released her grip, but never let go of Leliana’s eyes. “That having been said, if you do not intend to take her seriously, then perhaps it _would_ be better to decline...” Her face fell, and she turned towards the gibbous moon,.

“You’re protecting her,” Leliana realized with an incredulous laugh. “That feral little thief scraped her way out of a Blight. She can take care of herself, or can she not?”

Josephine regarded the bait with disdain. “Your skill as a bard gives you no advantage with me. And you know exactly what I am implying, because you have seen it too.”

“You’re too damned reasonable, you know that?” And with the sort of unwavering, fiery conviction that Leliana despaired of ever understanding. It was why she trusted Josephine, why she _needed_ her, and why they could now stand as equals regardless of their disagreements. But she felt the lack, an unease gnawing at her core every time her passions ran away with her. Always swaying and being swayed, longing for steady mooring while simultaneously resisting all that would bind her.

Josephine chose her words delicately. “When we first met, here was something of her in you. I know it is not the _most_ precise comparison, given your circumstances, but something--”

“Don’t be silly.” Leliana’s tone was facile, void of grace or pretense. In a memory, her tongue skimmed the edge of a blade, and her feet were shod silently in doeskin, with indulgent ribbons instead of greaves.

“It’s selfish of me,” Josephine continued, “but I have been wishing to see that wild, charming girl again. The look on her face when she danced with me, like there was no worry or sadness in all the world, ahh! It was--”

Leliana shifted quickly on her feet, as if to turn heel. “Things change. _People_ change.” She had felt that way with Josie, once, so many years ago, but they’d grown comfortable after their parting in a way that made love’s first blush pale. And then with-- she swept the thought carelessly aside, like a stray cobweb. It was an art she had mastered over ten years of practice, but for that one little slip...

  
She halted in mid-step. Sera laid her bare without even a touch, and she had welcomed it, invited it, really _felt_ it. As if she’d forgotten-- forgotten? _Andraste, forgive_ _me!_ To forget, even for a blink of an eye, the one precious thing she’d kept all to herself-- a corpse sheltered by the husk of a discarded life-- was an unimaginable lapse. Corpses within corpses adorned the shrine within, and her furious, scarlet and beating heart nestled in a cage of their bones. Leliana’s blood went cold; her hot tears fell upon the stone.

“So they do,” Josephine conceded. "But _that girl_ never really changed. I can still see her, sometimes. I saw her when--”

“Stop right there.”

Josephine had the wounded look of someone bereft of and longing for contact, but kept one step between them; prodding once or twice, leaving a trail of words to be followed or ignored. “At any rate, yes, one could call my motivations selfish. Could you _at least_ apologize to the poor thing? I’m afraid I have put myself in a position to bear the brunt of her sorrows.”

“I will consider it,” Leliana whispered, her voice dry and strangled. She removed a glove to better wipe away the tears, and Josephine folded a silk handkerchief into her fingers.

“Talk to her if you can. I will have more than enough whimpering and complaints to manage now that the western trade routes have reopened.” She left the spymaster in silence, alone but for the plaintive chittering of the swifts going to roost, a sliver of deep blue all that remained of the day’s light.


End file.
